quasar

quasar

(kwā`sär), one of a class of blue celestial objects having the appearance of stars when viewed through a telescope and currently believed to be the most distant and most luminous objects in the universe; the name is shortened from quasi-stellar radio source (QSR). Quasars were discovered as the visible counterparts of certain discrete celestial sources of radio waves (see radio astronomyradio astronomy,study of celestial bodies by means of the electromagnetic radio frequency waves they emit and absorb naturally. Radio Telescopes

Radio waves emanating from celestial bodies are received by specially constructed antennas, called radio telescopes,.....Click the link for more information.). Similar starlike objects that do not emit radio waves were subsequently discovered and named quasi-stellar objects (QSOs). Although their visible light is faint, the quasars are optically brighter than the galaxies with which radio sources had been identified before 1963. Before their spectra were studied carefully, it was believed that the quasars were stars in our galaxy. However, the lines in their spectra have enormous red shiftsred shiftor redshift,in astronomy, the systematic displacement of individual lines in the spectrum of a celestial object toward the red, or longer wavelength, end of the visible spectrum. The effect was discovered by V. M. Slipher of Lowell Observatory......Click the link for more information. that seem to imply that they are receding from the Milky Way with speeds as great as 95% of the speed of light. Only shifts toward the red end of the spectrum have been observed for quasars; blue-shifted ones that would indicate a quasar approaching our galaxy have not yet been found. If quasars were simply objects being ejected from nearby galaxies at high speeds, and not the distant objects they appear to be, then some would have blue shifts. If Hubble's lawHubble's law,in astronomy, statement that the distances between galaxies (see galaxy) or clusters of galaxies are continuously increasing and that therefore the universe is expanding......Click the link for more information. for the expansion of the universe is extrapolated to include the quasars, they would be many billion light-years away and consequently as luminous intrinsically as 1,000 galaxies combined. To account for such brilliant light, astronomers believe that quasars are supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei, releasing energy by the accretion of matter through a rotating viscous disk (see cosmologycosmology,area of science that aims at a comprehensive theory of the structure and evolution of the entire physical universe. Modern Cosmological Theories.....Click the link for more information.).

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quasar

(kway -zar) A compact extragalactic object that looks like a point of light but emits more energy than a hundred supergiant galaxies. The name is a contraction of quasi-stellar object (QSO). Although they are bright optical sources, quasars emit most of their energy as infrared radiation. They are also strong X-ray sources. About 10% of quasars are also radio sources.

Quasars, of which several thousand are known, were discovered in 1963 as the optical counterparts to some powerful radio sources. The spectra of these objects were peculiar, with bright emission lines, apparently of an unknown element, superimposed on a continuum. Maarten Schmidt finally recognized the pattern of lines in one of these objects (3C 273) as the Balmer series of hydrogen redshifted to z = 0.158 (see redshift), showing that it was impossible for this to be a star within the Galaxy. Other quasars were then discovered to have far greater redshifts. The record is currently held by RD J030117+002025, whose redshift of 5.50 indicates that it is receding from us with more than 90% of the speed of light. Astronomers today interpret the quasar redshifts as Doppler shifts (see Doppler effect) arising from the expansion of the Universe, making them among the most distant and hence the youngest extragalactic objects we observe.

To be visible at such great distances, quasars must be exceedingly luminous: many have absolute magnitudes brighter than –27. There is however a great range in luminosity. In addition quasars themselves are often variable by a factor of two or greater, on timescales sometimes as short as a few hours. This indicates that their light-producing regions are sometimes less than a light-day across, which poses several problems in explaining their energy generation. The only process known to be efficient enough is accretion on to a supermassive black hole (of the order of 109 solar masses) that is located at the nucleus of the quasar. This is in agreement with the nonthermal continuum emission observed at all wavelengths.

Matter is accreted on the central black hole via an accretion disk, which is heated by the dissipation of gravitational energy to produce a thermal component of emission in the quasar spectrum known as the blue bump. Gas clouds located around this system are also irradiated by the black hole to produce low-ionization emission lines (such as the Balmer series of hydrogen); the line broadening reveals speeds in excess of 10 000 km s–1, indicative of the bulk motion of the clouds in orbit, accelerated by the central massive gravitational potential. This inner region of the quasar surrounding the black hole and its accretion disk is known as the broad-line region (BLR), and studies of the variability in the line emission show that it spans a region with radius typically of a few light-months. At larger radii of ten to a thousand light-years from the central ionization source, the gas clouds have more moderate speeds of a few hundred km s–1 and radiate strongly in forbidden lines of ionized metals as well as hydrogen. There is probably a continuous transition between the BLR and this narrow-line region (NLR). Both the broad and narrow emission lines are superimposed on the nonthermal spectrum from the central black hole.

Deep exposures of quasars reveal that the nucleus is located in a large but otherwise normal ‘host’ elliptical galaxy. The radio quasars have also been shown to lie at the center of clusters of galaxies for redshifts up to at least 0.7. Many quasars of both types are surrounded by emission-line nebulae extended over many tens of kiloparsecs in filaments and clouds. Some observations suggest that the host galaxy is distorted in shape and is partaking in an interaction that may supply fuel to the black hole. Alternatively, if a cooling flow is taking place in the galaxy clusters surrounding the radio quasars, these could be fueled by the mass deposition. Only one-tenth of a solar mass a year is required to power a luminous quasar.

There is a lack of quasars at very low redshift. The luminosity function of quasars show that they were most numerous around a redshift of 2 (when the Universe was half its present age) and their numbers have declined catastrophically since. The reason is not yet established.

The lines of sight to distant quasars pass through many foreground systems, some of which leave their imprint on the quasar spectrum in the form of absorption lines of ionized metals such as carbon and magnesium. Many of these narrow absorption lines are thought to be due to extended dark halos of ordinary galaxies. Some quasars show peculiar broadened line-of-sight absorption lines of Lyman-alpha that have a high column density known as damped Lyman-alpha systems. The foreground systems are most likely either high-redshift LSB galaxies, or the progenitors of present-day disk galaxies.

Most of the very highest redshift quasars show a large number of very narrow single absorption lines that completely ‘eat away’ the quasar continuum emission just blueward of the quasar's Lyman-α emission line. This is the Lyman-alpha forest and is caused by Lyman-α absorption by a population of small clouds spread over a large range in redshift. The small width of individual lines precludes their association with the quasar, and they are thought to arise instead from intergalactic shreds of primordial matter. The tendency of the number density of these Lyman-alpha clouds to decrease along the line of sight toward an individual quasar, is known as the proximity effect, and is caused by the quasar radiation ionizing any clouds too close to it.

Absorption features intrinsic to the quasar are found only in broad absorption line (BAL) quasars. The width of the lines implies that massive outflows of absorbing gas are taking place at speeds of tens of thousands of kilometers per second away from the quasar.

quasar

[′kwā‚zär]

(astronomy)

Quasi-stellar astronomical object, often a radio source; all quasars have large red shifts; they have small optical diameter, but may have large radio diameter. Also known as quasi-stellar object (QSO).

quasar

any of a class of extragalactic objects that emit an immense amount of energy in the form of light, infrared radiation, etc., from a compact source. They are extremely distant and their energy generation is thought to involve a supermassive black hole located in the centre of a galaxy

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